Let Your Fingers Do the Talking
Filed under: Your Health, Dave Carpenter — Copyright©2006 Dave Carpenter @ 10:54 am

by Dave Carpenter, ND, C. Ac., CCI

Because your nails are found at your extremities, they are the last to receive oxygen and nutrients carried in the blood. For this reason, they often show signs of deficiencies sooner than other tissues.

If your nails are brittle or spoon shaped, or you frequently get hangnails, you may be suffering from a nutritional deficiency. More important, unhealthy nails may be a subtle warning sign of an impending health problem.

Your nails are composed primarily of keratin, a hardened protein also found in skin and hair. While weak, brittle nails may be a signal that you need more protein in your diet, it si more likely that the problem is a deficiency of the B vitamin biotin. Even if you’re getting ample protein in your diet, your body can’t make use of it unless you have sufficient stores of biotin.

Although the link between biotin and healthy nails comes from veterinary research (biotin is known to increase the strength and hardness of hooves in pigs and horses), human research supports these findings. In clinical studies, biotin supplementation has been shown to increase the thickness of nails by 25 percent.

Zinc Will Put You in the Pink

A healthy nail is pink and shiny, while white spots on the nails indicate injury to the nail bed that was not repaired successfully by the body. This in turn may point to an underlying zinc deficiency, as zinc is crucial to successful wound healing. In addition to white spots, other signs of zinc deficiency include hangnails and inflamed cuticles.

A zinc deficiency affects more than just your nails. The health of your skin, your body’s ability to stave off infection, and your sense of vision, taste, and smell all depend on having adequate levels of zinc. A lack of zinc can cause retarded growth, birth defects, enlargement of the prostate gland, impaired sexual functions, loss of fertility, and hair loss. Because of the importance of zinc to immune function and overall health, I recommend that everyone supplement 30 milligrams of zinc daily.

Spoon-Shaped Nails Suggest Iron Deficiency

While low iron stores are the most common cause of anemia, this condition is the last stage of iron deficiency. Earlier signs of iron deficiency include spoon-shaped nails, fatigue, and poor immune function. Infants, women of childbearing age, and the elderly are most likely to suffer from an iron deficiency. Be sure to take plant based, (ionic form) iron so that it is assimulated by the body and doesn’t cause problems.

Healthy Hair, Nails, and Hormones

Perhaps the most serious condition associated with unhealthy nails is hypothyroidism, or low thyroid function. Hypothyroidism, which can cause weak and brittle nails, has more serious effects on the body as well, contributing to chronic infection, osteoporosis, infertility, high cholesterol levels, and cardiovascular disease.

Other symptoms of low thyroid function include fatigue, weight gain, dry skin, constipation, hair loss, depression, and intolerance to cold. If you have more than one of these symptoms, you might want to have your thyroid function tested.

Hypothyroidism is easily treated through hormone replacement therapy using natural thyroid hormone or herbal supplements.